US drops from top 10 economic freedom ranking

After seven years of continuous decline in the rating, the US has gone down to 12th place in the 2014 Index of Economic Freedom. The report says the US is the only country to show such a prolonged decline.

The falling ranking was primarily caused by large reductions in
property rights, freedom from corruption, and increasing
government spending, says the study.

Since President Obama first took office in 2009 the cost of
meeting federal government regulations has increased by over $60
billion. Government spending is now over 40 percent of gross
domestic product and the national debt has now ballooned to over
100 percent the size of the economy. Still the Obama
administration continues to restrain entire sectors of the
economy with regulation, including, finance, energy and health
care.

The index published by The Wall Street Journal and Washington’s
No. 1 think tank The Heritage Foundation, evaluates a nation's
commitment to free enterprise by evaluating 10 categories,
including fiscal soundness, government size and property rights
and giving a score from 0 to 100. The higher up the scoreboard a
county is, the higher is its economic growth, long-term
prosperity and social progress

The US scored 75.5. In comparison the leader Hong Kong scored
90.1, followed by Singapore, Australia, Switzerland and New
Zealand. These are the only economic zones to earn the index's
"economically free" designation.

Russia’s economic freedom score is 51.9, which puts its economy
in 140th place, sandwiched between Tajikistan and Burundi. With
improvements in four of the 10 economic freedoms, including
control of government spending, counterbalanced by declines in
trade freedom, freedom from corruption, and fiscal freedom the
country's score was 0.8 points higher this year. Russia came in
the “mostly unfree” category, ranked 41st out of 43
countries in the Europe region, and its overall score is below
the world average.

Eighteen European nations, including Germany, Sweden, Georgia and
Poland, have reached new highs in economic freedom. By contrast,
five others - Greece, Italy, France, Cyprus and the United
Kingdom obtained score below 20 years ago, when the rating
appeared.

No surprise, the most improved players are in Eastern Europe,
including Estonia, Lithuania and the Czech Republic. After living
under communism there is no trouble recognizing the benefits of a
free-market system.